Katie laughed behind him and he turned to look at her. Lines of color were radiating away from her, creating an aura or nimbus around her. He stared, not really seeing her, just the light around her. The colors were present everywhere, but they seemed to twist when they got within a few feet of her, pulled into her body as they disappeared. Her body seemed darker and less real than he remembered. Most of her aura was blue, with different shades of purple and green acting as secondary colors.
“You look like you’ve never seen a girl before,” Katie said with a grin.
“I’m not sure I have, everything is different,” Drew said, looking away from Katie to glance at Sarah’s prone form next to him. Her aura wasn’t as bright as Katie’s, and the predominant colors were different: oranges, yellows, and greens all swirling in equal number, but like Katie, her body itself was devoid of the color granted by his new vision.
“How long was I out?” Drew continued to look around; underneath them, he could see massive white lines of mana flowing through the Earth. The movement was like watching rivers flow, several of them converging and creating a glowing light directly under the building they had just escaped from. Another, larger line surged out of that node, and from there into DC proper, joining with other lines and then splitting chaotically. It created a vast, intricate web. Every point seemed to fill with light and then when it was full, passed it forward into other lines and nodes. As he looked, he realized that sitting in the middle of all the various webs was a single node that didn’t have an outlet. He couldn’t tell exactly where that node was, but it was many times deeper than any other node he could see.
“A long ass time. Sun rose awhile back. What the heck are you staring at?”
“Mana, I think. I can see these lines under us. They converge under the HQ building and then head into DC, and there is one massive node there. I’m guessing that whole knot is the central nexus, and it’s huge.” Drew stood up with a groan, his body stiff from hours of inactivity.
“Cool. Well, your turn to be on watch, I’m going to slot heat shield.” She laid down on the spot Drew had just vacated. It was only as she did so that Drew realized she had changed clothing again, out of the ODUs she had been wearing and into a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt. She had been pretty in uniform, but she was beautiful in normal clothing. He blinked at her. “You know, it’s really not polite to stare,” she said with a grin and then grabbed her head in pain.
“Mother fucker,” she grunted but remained conscious. “Cast refresh on me please, I don’t think I’m gonna get to sleep, just feel like I have a migraine.” Drew wisely kept his laugh to himself while he created the hand seals to cast the spell on her.
Katie grunted and sat back up. Then she smacked his leg, “Hey, what was that for?”
“Because of how stupid you were to slot blink step in the middle of a fight,” Katie replied, “How did you even stay awake?” She rubbed her forehead and shifted a few feet back so that she could lean against the wall.
“I don’t think I did,” Drew said, as he went in search for food, “You want anything?” He asked, grabbing a bag of chips.
“Chocolate, dark.”
“Nuts?”
“God no.”
Drew laughed, and he grabbed some M&Ms and candy bars for Katie while he grabbed three ravioli packages in a microwaveable bowl and a spoon. Not that he had a microwave, he just wanted something more solid than snack food. Handing Katie the chocolate, he popped the top on his ravioli and began to eat it cold.
Katie gave him the weirdest look, “Men are so gross.”
Drew shrugged, “First real food I’ve had in a week, even if I have to eat it cold.”
They ate in silence for a few moments, Drew getting lost in the new colors around him. His eyes never really stopped moving as he tried to take in everything. He glanced over at Sarah, then back at Katie, who just shook her head with a sigh.
“I can tell what colors your xatherite are with this sight. Well, I have a hard time distinguishing between the indigos and violets, but I think that’s just my refusal to acknowledge they both aren’t purple.”
Katie frowned slightly. “Well, that will be helpful if we encounter any other humans, and it might hold true for the other stuff that has been mana twisted as well. Oh, I know.” She hopped up to the wall with the window looking out to the southwest, unsummoning it with a thought, “Can you see the turtle’s aura?”
Drew looked out the window and frowned, “No, I can see the ley lines, but anything past about 50 feet, I can’t see the mana around.”
“Right, there was some sort of range limit on it right?” Katie asked.
“15 meters, yeah.” He looked around again. Outside, the mana seemed to flow in a normal pattern, pulled slightly towards the node in the basement of the HQ building. But he realized that the sun was already a quarter of the way through the sky, “Let me try out gravitas a bit and then I’ll head out. I’d much rather do this with lots of light to spare.”
He shifted to a spot where there were no pipes in the ceiling and then activated the spell. Unlike all his other skills that were always at full power, he could sense how to change the potency of this one, and a slight change in his intention turned it from negative to positive gravity. He also realized that he couldn’t change the direction the gravity was pulling from; it was all either straight up or straight down towards the center of the earth, and thus his hopes of being a windrunner met an early death.
Drew’s first mistake was using it on himself instead of an object near him; his second mistake was that he activated it at full negative power, which meant he fell to the ceiling at half speed. It didn’t hurt him, as he slowed himself with his hands and then rolled into the ceiling. A feeling of disorientation overcame him as he looked down at Katie with his back against what felt like the floor. He frowned; he needed to get to the floor before the spell wore out or he’d fall at full speed the entire ten-foot distance.
Changing the force of the spell to negate all gravity on him, he floated down away from the ceiling for a moment, lost in freefall. He pushed gently against the ceiling and floated down parallel to the floor until he was eye level with Katie.
“Having fun?” She asked with a grin.
“A little,” he said, reaching out a hand to her, “Hey, hold me against the floor for a second.” Katie grabbed his arm and he shifted his body so that he was oriented with gravity again, and then let the spells manipulation equal zero. “Okay, more than a little,” he said with a grin. He had just flown on his own, eat that Wright brothers! Well, technically he had fallen and floated, but that was close enough.
“You wanna try?” he asked Katie.
She laughed and shook her head, “No thanks, maybe if we find another one and I can control it.”
“Yeah, that’s fair. It would’ve been much scarier if I wasn’t in control.” Drew frowned, pulling up the spell again, “Oh, can’t use it on other people anyway, only myself and inanimate objects.”
“Try making my shoes heavier,” Katie said, “That would be a huge advantage in a fight if you could make it so Chakri couldn’t dodge or make a weapon twice as heavy to wear them out faster.”
“Hmm, can’t switch to something else while the spell is still active, and I can’t cast it again for a minute.” Drew looked around waiting for the spell’s cooldown to allow him to recast it.
He had Katie take the walls down long enough for them to relieve themselves in the bathrooms; these toilets thankfully had tanks, so they could be flushed. When they were both done, he cast gravitas on her boots, sticking them to the floor with two and a half times the normal gravity. She stumbled but was able to adjust after a few seconds, her movements much slower.